Interview: Professor Green

It's your first gig of the tour, how does it feel?Scary, I am as excited as I am nervous which is a good mix of feelings, but yeah definitely a little bit anxious, it’s been a long time coming, and I have supported so many people and to be doing a headline tour is nuts.Your album 'Alive Till I'm Dead', does it have a flowing narrative or is it random collection of tracks?I just think it felt right you know, I was always conscious of wanting to make a album that wasn't just a collection of songs, its starts on a really upbeat note which is a prominent part of my character, as the album progresses it gets in to more sides of me and other places I have been. I think it’s important to be honest in your music. Honest is really how you relate to people to you and all the artists I love for years and will have for years to come, I have been able to relate to their music. There is so much manufactured music out there, it doesn't happen much any more so I am trying to bring the substance back.So relating to one of your tracks on the album, 'Jungle', what's it about?It’s about where I grew up Hackney, the ‘Jungle’ being a metaphor for that. There are a lot of animals out there. We just operate a bit differently, things that other people can't understand it’s a common place to us, you know it really is different way of life on that side of the world.Where do your lyrics come from?

Loads of different things, no two songs were ever made the same. Sometimes I'd be doing the washing up and whistling and come up with the melody and it will stick and then I will come up with the words for it and then I will go to a producer and we will work a beat round that. You know other times I will sit down and work on the chorus, it always comes up differently. One of the new songs I have been working on with Lauren Pritchard, it’s a song called ‘What's Cheating’, and I was actually sitting with a girl who I was seeing one time at a place and we were sat at the window and a girl walked past who caught my eye and I found myself watching her as she walked past, and I got the first line for it, 'When my eyes wander, but my hands don't, how far too far to go.' You can get inspiration from anywhere.So when your eyes do ‘wander’ what is it you look for in a girl?Different things, you know, you find different things in different people. In one woman if will be her strength that's attractive and in another person it might be their vulnerability, you know it’s different in every person.I always start the day off with a big tin of baked beans and some nice crispy toast to get my energy going for the day. What sort of food do you start off with to get your energy going for the day?I'm terrible!, I normally don't eat to quite late in the day. Yeah i wake up, take my dog out and by that time I am normally 10 minutes late for my cab anyway. So it’s been mental doing all the promo and gigs and that. I have definitely lost out on a lot of sleep. If I do eat breakfast I try and eat fruit. Yeah I try and start the day off pretty well. But there have been incidents where we have been on the road, we have eaten before we left the hotel because we wanted to get as much sleep as we could and there wasn't a Marks and Spencer in the service station but there was a burger king and yeah it all went a bit wrong, but yeah we try and avoid that for the most part.From your days of rap battles, what's the worst thing someone could say to you?I take everything with a pinch of salt I was aware with what I was up with, it’s like being in a boxing ring you get annoyed with someone, like getting annoyed with someone hitting you, it doesn't really make sense, I have said some horrible things. I told a girl she had a flat back and front and she looked like an ironing board. Yeah, there is plenty of evidence of that on Youtube.Are there any other talents you have that we don't know about?I am pretty good cook, yeah I make a really good roast, slow cook lamb, side of vinegar, shallots, yeah that's about the extent on my talents.